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Twisted reasoning
There are many strange conclusions in progan01's posting.
First, it looks at demand only from the US viewpoint. The fact is that oil demand globally will continue to go up. While in the US it's gone down by about 10% in recent years, in both China and India demand is skyrocketing and more than makes up for the US decrease (see, for example, https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+oil+consumption ). Both China and India governments spend a considerable amount of money subsidizing gasoline and other petroleum products in their countries. We don't know about China because they keep their spending secret, but government in India runs huge deficits keeping prices low. These governments would love nothing better than for more oil to come onto the global market so they could spend less money on this. And with cheaper gas there are literally hundreds of millions of people in these countries who would buy scooters and cars to use it.
progan01 is somewhat correct about the history of oil production in Iraq. When Sadaam was in power, all he cared about was getting enough oil production to pay for his exorbitant lifestyle and pay off the elites to keep him in power. He cared little about the living conditions of his people. So when he came to power he allowed the infrastructure to collapse and oil production to decrease. What hinders Iraqi oil output today is that poor infrastructure, along with the lack of a first-world economic system to produce it. There's no conspiracy inside or outside the country, just general ineptness and ancient tribal conflicts that were only increased by religious differences in past centuries.
In some places in the Muslim world religion is used to hold back the people by the people in power. But it doesn't explain Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, all of which have very high standards of living.
"So the oil majors have learned to keep supply at just the edge of insufficiency -- and prefer to err on the side of too little, as happened in California just last week." This is a very strange statement. In a free market, supply is always just at the edge of insufficiency -- but so is demand. It's how prices are made. Raise the price even a little, demand goes down, and suddenly you have a small surplus of supply. And the idea that the oil companies caused the recent oil shortage in California is false. They've wanted to build new oil refineries in the state for decades, but have been denied by the state and federal governments. Instead, four refineries have closed in past years, all without new capacity coming online. As a result, all the refineries in California are always operating at peak capacity, and when one went down, gas shot up as a result.
The idea that there is all this money to be extracted from the poor by the oil corporations is nonsense. If you want to make money from the masses, it's far better to raise their standard of living first. The US, Europe, and Japan are responsible for tens of billions of dollars in profit per year for oil corporations, far more than they get from the other regions of the world. If true power comes from making people desperate, why have the governments of India, China, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan been working so hard to improve the living standards of their citizens?
First, it looks at demand only from the US viewpoint. The fact is that oil demand globally will continue to go up. While in the US it's gone down by about 10% in recent years, in both China and India demand is skyrocketing and more than makes up for the US decrease (see, for example, https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+oil+consumption ). Both China and India governments spend a considerable amount of money subsidizing gasoline and other petroleum products in their countries. We don't know about China because they keep their spending secret, but government in India runs huge deficits keeping prices low. These governments would love nothing better than for more oil to come onto the global market so they could spend less money on this. And with cheaper gas there are literally hundreds of millions of people in these countries who would buy scooters and cars to use it.
progan01 is somewhat correct about the history of oil production in Iraq. When Sadaam was in power, all he cared about was getting enough oil production to pay for his exorbitant lifestyle and pay off the elites to keep him in power. He cared little about the living conditions of his people. So when he came to power he allowed the infrastructure to collapse and oil production to decrease. What hinders Iraqi oil output today is that poor infrastructure, along with the lack of a first-world economic system to produce it. There's no conspiracy inside or outside the country, just general ineptness and ancient tribal conflicts that were only increased by religious differences in past centuries.
In some places in the Muslim world religion is used to hold back the people by the people in power. But it doesn't explain Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, all of which have very high standards of living.
"So the oil majors have learned to keep supply at just the edge of insufficiency -- and prefer to err on the side of too little, as happened in California just last week." This is a very strange statement. In a free market, supply is always just at the edge of insufficiency -- but so is demand. It's how prices are made. Raise the price even a little, demand goes down, and suddenly you have a small surplus of supply. And the idea that the oil companies caused the recent oil shortage in California is false. They've wanted to build new oil refineries in the state for decades, but have been denied by the state and federal governments. Instead, four refineries have closed in past years, all without new capacity coming online. As a result, all the refineries in California are always operating at peak capacity, and when one went down, gas shot up as a result.
The idea that there is all this money to be extracted from the poor by the oil corporations is nonsense. If you want to make money from the masses, it's far better to raise their standard of living first. The US, Europe, and Japan are responsible for tens of billions of dollars in profit per year for oil corporations, far more than they get from the other regions of the world. If true power comes from making people desperate, why have the governments of India, China, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan been working so hard to improve the living standards of their citizens?
Edited by zackers
Updated - 11th Oct